Absolute farce. The organisers of Rally France moved the points-paying power stage to the start of the rally, running it as a fiddly little street circuit for no good reason. Thierry Neuville, the only driver who could challenge Ogier, needed to win the power stage and get the three bonus points that go with it to stay a mathematical possibility of competing with Ogier. Dani Sordo won the power stage, and Ogier was crowned champion.

Ogier winning the title was an inevitability. But the way it happened was a farcical anti-climax.

@prisoner-monkeys This was even worse than the 2008 GP2 season finale. Giorgio Pantano won the championship after clinching pole position, picking up two points that put Bruno Senna’s slim mathematical hopes of winning the title to the grave (not a big fan of Bruno, but still).
In recent times, in fact this very year, the British F3 National Class championship was decided by a tweet. Before the last round at the Nurburgring, UAE driver Ed Jones tweeted he wouldn’t be participating. As he was the only driver to have a mathematical chance of beating Sun Zheng to the title, the Chinese driver won.

Well, this decision in France was taken months ago. It has something to do with filming permits – the power stage finished in front of a landmark building in Strasbourg, and since the power stage is televised live, it seems they could only get the permits for the Friday. And since it’s Sebastien Loeb’s last rally, the organisers probably wanted the live stage at the start of the event.

It’s only pure chance that Neuville was in the title fight at this point, anyway. And maybe it’s for the best – now that Ogier has been declared champion, we can get down to a straight fight between him and Loeb on the fastest tarmac rally of the year.

October 5th- 17-year-old Italian driver Antonio Fuoco, member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, wins the Formula Renault 2.0 Alps championship. (Race 11 out of 12, Round 6 out of 6). The feat is all the more remarkable given that this is his first full season in cars. He beat more experienced drivers like Luca Ghiotto and Bruno Bonifacio.